Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/963441
50 | Overdrive | April 2018 ELD HEADACHES of range of cell towers that "it's a little aggravating." Boyd, like other operators, however, wants hours of service changes to help lessen the pain of the new technology by freeing operators to run with greater flexibility and fewer limitations. Boyd sees the cumulative 70 hours in eight days limit as onerous. "If you don't work but 11 hours a day," he says, "I don't see where the 70" should be a limitation. Landstar-leased operator Rick Ash says he was told by the safety department that he violated his 70 at the tail end of a week in which two Omnitracs service outages put his ELD down. During each event, he was robbed of any effective window into his cumulative limits. His problems began on a Monday. He'd been on duty six hours as he finished unloading in Montgomery, Alabama, and had driven two hours. As he rolled out, however, his ELD told him he had just two hours of driving left. Conversations with the logs depart- ment told him the Omnitracs system had crashed and showed no update from his unit since Sunday. He says he was told not to worry about violations because "you won't be seeing accurate numbers" on the in-cab unit. Later in the week, a similar thing hap- pened. The logs department reassured him he had plenty time. Just before he was planning to shut down, however, safety called to say he was running beyond his cumulative limits. "That could have been true," he says, but by that point he'd lost confidence in the entire record. Now he's got a viola- tion in the company's system that the safety department will not remove, he says. He's unsure how that will bear on his lease status, if at all. A Landstar spokesperson noted "the company does identify log violations and, depending on the violation, may require remediation training or take other steps to address the violation." Kim and Nick Holley, too, have expe- rienced intra-fleet conflict since moving to ELDs, when an outage basically ren- dered the log nonfunctional, according to an email from the office. The mes- sage, essentially: "Try not to do anything until we get this taken care of," Kim says. "On one side, dispatch is saying get there. Safety is saying wait." So Nick "whipped out his laptop" log- ging program, Kim says, and delivered. "When we got to the location, we were able to get hold of the Omnitracs peo- ple," whose tech acknowledged the XRS "has a problem with teams." Landstar says its owner-operators' ELDs "include functionality in the event of a service outage or disruption that provides that, as soon as the ELD resumes service, it is supposed to 'catch up' or track from where it left off in order to accurately reflect the hours of service for that operator." But Ash says that the next time he has an ELD technical problem, he's going to do what Nick did and "reach for my paper logs" to keep as accurate a record as pos- sible, which FMCSA itself has advised. In the event of a totally malfunctioning unit, a data download from the unit or a cloud storage account – or an email from dis- patch – could fulfill carrying the previous seven days' records. Cuthbertson emphasizes that Omnitracs' onboard units enable an "offline login" mode that should be available during outages so that a driver can retrieve the prior seven days' records and minimize use of paper logs. On issues of customer support, Cuthbertson recognizes the change that going "from paper to electronic" represents. "That's why we put the help button on all the screens" in their devices and invested in training with local-support companies such as Wired Truck. But no small amount of frustration with the change continues, nonethe- less. Kim Holley says she sees tension mounting among her fellow drivers: "We understand the time crunch they're feel- ing." She witnessed a shouting match over a tight through-lane in a Flying J parking lot as operators headed in oppo- site directions hit an impasse. "I think that the tension that drivers are under right now is insane," she says. "It's very intrusive into our lives." The tension is pushing good people out of the business, she believes. In spite of his generally positive expe- rience with ELDs, small-fleet owner Richmond also says he still has "drivers I have to talk off the ledge" of quitting. What he tells them: "You just have to change your mindset and your expecta- tions, and you'll be fine. You can't drive these trucks like you're on paper logs anymore." ELD BUYERS' GUIDE Visit OverdriveOnline.com/ DownloadELDGuide to download Over- drive's ELD Buyers' Guide. This updated compilation of ELD mandate coverage includes breakdowns of the basics within the federal rule and the variety of devices that satisfy the electronic recordkeeping requirement. In addition, find out: • What considerations to make in choosing a unit for your operation. • The two basic types of ELDs. • How duty statuses change and how edits work. • What to do when circumstances force you into recording a violation. • What bonus features would be use- ful in your operation. • What factory-fit telematics exist for pairing with third-party equipment. Nick and Kim Holley haul in a 2010 Freightliner Coronado. Their "furniture lives in Texas," says Kim, while their home is mostly on the road. Courtesy of the Holleys